One major reason to test oral cancer patients -- or at least, ALL oropharyngeal cancer patients -- for HPV is that oncologists are now concerned that interpretation of results of treatment (& of clinical trials) are being compromised (or muddled) because they do not know if the better response to the therapy is actually due to the therapy, or to the different biologic characteristics of the HPV+ cancer (generally more responsive to treatment).

If oncologsts know HPV status up-front, even if there is no change in therapy, by examining the post-treatment data from a set of patients, they may determine (for example) that HPV+ cancers respond better to certain chemotherapy agents, or induction chemo, etc. At Hopkins our ENT does not recommend neck dissections for HPV+ HNC patients who have achieved "complete clinical response" to chemoradiation -- which is a real change in treatment based on what we were told in 2005. There are other "rumblings" about possible modifications in treatment which might result once a more complete evaluation of HPV+ cancer cases is made.

Also, for what's it's worth, *I* would want to know if I were HPV+ -- not only because of what it means to a patient vis-a-vis response to treatment and rate of recurrence, but also if a therapeutic vaccine ever gets approved, I might be a candidate. We still do not know the long-term behavior of the virus, that is, whether it might "come back" and cause problems years down the road, and a vaccine might help prevent this.

Thus to answer Buzz' surgeon, you send the results to Buzz! (And perhaps, to oncologsts studying HPV+ oral cancer...)

Gail